We are now having a cruise day at sea. We had to find activities without a tour guide.

It's always fun to see where the ship is located. We are heading away from Greece and the next day we should arrive in Croatia.

After eating most meals in the relaxed buffet area we decided to try our first breakfast in the dining room.

I'm smiling because it was very good food.

Next we found good seats to watch the artists auction off the glassware they had made while we watched. They did very well. One piece went for $1,800 and it wasn't as good as the piece that Polynesian Paddy and his wife Barbara won.

Guess who. We met them back in the dining room for lunch. That's twice in one day.

It's been so much fun to have friends on the cruise with us.

Next we hung around until it was time for

formal night. This time we dressed up and stayed. Three fancy meals in one day!

By now we are so full that we went back to our room and watched TV until we fell asleep.
We are two lucky senior citizens.

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I'll be back later with some more photos of tiki projects. Right now we are in a hotel and hot baked cookies are coming out of the oven. Can't miss that.
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Yuck, the hotel is nice the cookies were the worst ever. We carried them back to our room and fed the bugs in the garden a treat.

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Update for Tiki Atari's kickstarter project. His design and my fine tuning and glazing. I've shown one of these topless mugs so far. It takes me 8 hours to glaze one mug. Three layers of glaze in each color.

I don't need to label these photos. I just let you see how I go around and around a mug choosing the next color and spot to paint over and over again. GROG you need to come glaze these for me!!!

Two down 9 to go with every mug with different glazes.

The colors will not be pastel when they have clear glaze over them. They will become darker and richer.

TikiAno we wish you a fun and happy 4th and the same for all our tiki buddies, male and female.

WooHooWahine I'm so glad to know that its OK to share my photos here. Since we are going to Tiki Kon I'll be posting those in a couple of weeks. I always like to have something to look forward to. It can be a trip or opening the kiln or someone coming to visit.

We are now in Venice Italy. We will have our last organized tour on Friday the 13th.

We will tour with Polynesian Paddy and his wife Barbara.

This shows the ship on the way during the night.

Our favorite place to dine...the buffet.

Dan liked to take his coffee to the back of the ship to watch the ocean.

Our first view of land near Venice was a beach.

All of a sudden old beautiful buildings appear. Coming in by ship we are almost as high up as a low flying plane.

Piazza San Marco the most famous place to gather in Venice.

Close up.

We continued on until we were at the port to dock.

Canals and bridges.

Ahead is the port with other ships already docked.

Next we boarded a boat to take us to the Piazza.

I'm in Venice!!!.

We followed our guide towards the square and the Doge's Palace that we would tour.

The man on a horse leads the way.

This is a famous site called the Bridge of Sighs.

Here's a close up of some heads that adorn the bridge.

We toured the Doge's palace. Whoever was in charge of Venice was called the Doge and lived here until the next man took over. It could never be someone from the same family.

A view from the palace to its own square below.

The Bridge of Sighs was so named because it goes from the palace where trial were held to the prison. When someone was sent to the prison they had their last view of Venice out these small portals. One side into Venice and the other side

looks out to the Great Canal. One last sigh and they were gone.

The prison had all the rest of the windows with these bars.

We went to the Piazza where I noticed

a man with a tiki on his leg. A girl had to interpret for me so that he would pose his leg for the photo. He must have thought I was a strange old lady.

Tourists everywhere.

Next we were off with our friends on a gondola. Of course we had our Tiki Magazine.

Polynesian Paddy and Barbara.

I took the next two photos to show the decay

of the buildings along the canals.

We are back on a boat to re-board our ship for the last night. Our boat passed the hotel we will stay in after the cruise.

On the Grand Canal.

This shows where the boat was docked.

Our last night on the ship we watched Bourne Identity again. He was in Rome and in Venice. It was fun to see that happen.

On June 14th we are waiting for the time to leave the ship.

We passed the time with our friends. Polynesian Paddy found that he had worn holes in his shoes with all the walking.

It was time for them to leave us and the ship.

They were taking a shuttle to the airport and home to Southern California.

We still hung out until

we were called.

This was our last view of the Celebrity Equinox.

Now we are on a water taxi to start two more days in Venice on our own with no tours.

More of our trip to the Mediterranean. This is the first of the last two days we spent on our own. No tours just the two of us walking around exploring Venice. This really is the best way to see a city.

WC equals Wendy Cevola. I had a lot of fun watching for these signs and seeing how they varied from hand written to carved in marble. I ended up with a good collection of photos.

Just like the good old USA.

There was even a Best Western on a canal.

Most of our meals were salad and pizza at small restaurants.

The wind really made the heat more bearable.

Notice how the WC is pointing to me in the photo above?

I found this photo in a magazine. It shows the cruise ships docked with Venice behind them.

This is the view from our hotel window. We could see the tower of San Marco square.

OK, I just felt the need to share this strange toilet seat that was in our hotel bathroom.

Skull Art on clothing is also prevalent in Venice.

Old buildings everywhere.

Wonderful skylines.

The pizza in Italy is not as good as in the states and costs four times as much as Round Table. Dan felt the need to have spaghetti in Italy. It wasn't as good as in the states either.

While we were having dinner we noticed that people had umbrella's. It had gone from hot and windy to raining in an hour.

Rain made all the tourists disappear. The square had emptied out. We walked back in the rain and didn't get very wet.

However Dan decided to add more water to his head. Isn't he cute?

Breakfast came with our hotel room. The buffet was wonderful but

was topped by the view. See the birds? They were everywhere finishing whatever anyone left on their plates.

I couldn't tell if this high end clothing was based on McDonald's or not.

It was still early so we decided to beat the crowds to the Rialto Bridge.

The view from the top of the bridge.

Dan standing on the bridge.

We just enjoyed walking along the canal taking photos.

Too bad that graffiti jerks ruin old buildings.

We found a nice restaurant for lunch but we were asked to leave. We were not hungry enough. We ordered a bottle of water (we never found any free water in any of the countries we visited) and two salads. Without ordering entrees they would not serve us.
So we left and later were hungry enough for our standard of pizza and salad.

At that restaurant they had my initials posted so no wonder they served us.

In Spain and now in Italy we saw the fish pedicure businesses.

One more view near the Rialto bridge and we were heading back to the square.

On the way we saw many shops with glass animals. I like the space men.

The square had filled up by the time we reached it.

The earlier rain had left some areas flooded and boards were put out so that tours could continue.

We saw birds taking baths.

Of course I found my initials again.

I have a set just like these.

I never get lost.

We saw an artist working on glass animals.

Pointing the way to Dan's favorite shop.

Here it is.

This is what it looks like after the tours start.

We went back to the hotel. I could see which room was ours because

I stuck post it notes in the windows.

One more day and the journey ends. Then it's back to tiki time. Cheers, Wendy